


the crossroads of life

by utrinque_paratus



Series: der verstand steht still [3]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: (with what is given), Aftermath of Violence, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Original Character(s), POV Thomas Nightingale, PTSD, Post-Ettersberg, Present time, Suicidal Ideation, Survivor Guilt, Therapy Session, War Trauma, World War II, partly deals with past Mellenby/Nightingale, war imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utrinque_paratus/pseuds/utrinque_paratus
Summary: In early 1945, Thomas Nightingale finds himself in a London hospital, having survived Ettersberg and recovering from the brink of death after being shot on his walk home. What seems like a feat of utter stupendousness to most proves to be an excruciating burden for Thomas himself. With most of the men he fought alongside lying dead, and his body and mind scarred by unspeakable trauma amassed throughout the war, how does one find the strength to allow oneself to live on?There are many lessons to learn, and many pieces to pick up after being broken apart.But in spite of how impossible it may seem, there will, eventually, be a path forward. Maybe not in the ways one would imagine, or even like.But, with time mending itself, a path there will be.
Series: der verstand steht still [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984297
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. this is how I remember

**Author's Note:**

> Reading Part 1 and 2 of 'der verstand steht still' is not required to be able to follow this story.
> 
> This story implies a very grey and complex version of past Mellenby/Nightingale, especially during the last years of the war. This is also the reason why I cannot bring myself to tag this in the relationship section.
> 
> This is a study of trauma and its ramifications, some of its shattering aspects, but also the path to recovery throughout time. This is going to be bleak, but there will also be glimmers of hope - and the choice to move forward.  
> I rated it Teen and Upwards, but this story could be overwhelming for some. Please take care of yourself & your mental health!

Time is fleeting, yet ever-present. Time is intangible, yet imperative.

She keeps the world in joint. At the same moment, she breaks it down to dust.

And as every other unique thing that seems to be uncategorizable, we humans have – of course – begun to measure her. Now, books revolutionising the world list clear definitions of time, based on nothing else but the laws of mathematics and physical theory. 

Yet definitions change upon perception. 

And time’s perception defines our every memory, our every path.

The way we live: and remember. 

I remember how time has always refused to stay tamed under my hands. And these days, I have given up on trying. 

Just as with death, I had no other choice left but to let time become my friend. 

(It just took a little longer.) 

And as with so many things, this process began during the war. As war breaks perceptions down to dust and leaves it to us helpless creatures to build them back up. 

Most of those maxims I believe to speak of on valid grounds are irrelevant and mundane. I was, by no means, born highbrow: I am no philosopher, nor a scientist, and there are a multitude of reasons why I was reluctant to strive for metamorphosis in days of old.

Not because I was averse. Rather, because in the end, doesn’t everything invariably come down to the very same at its core – what is the sense of tremendous change, if a change of experience is not always accompanied by a change of the heart also?

As I used to say: _Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose._

I had grown disillusioned as I, bit by bit, realised that rarely a person who gave the air of striving for progress – _proper_ progress – went about it accompanied by putting in the work ultimately required. A transition in character that actually altered deeply ingrained convictions. As I understood that history would, inevitably, repeat itself – despite superficial change – that nobody would learn from mistakes of old, or set out for _real_ change. 

I was weary to the bone, and exhausted, and drained of all strength needed to make a stand, even for my own self. Had I not, after all, just attempted to desperately shape the course of history to a mere margin of what I thought would be _better?_ And had I not only seen all my efforts be for nought, the one, final _time_ it had counted, the one time I had stood up against everyone and made my voice heard? The one _time_ it would not have counted for only a margin, but for so, so, _so_ much more?

Since that time – since Operation Spatchcock – I have lived, and persevered, and learnt. To not get lost, one eventually needs to adapt. Change is inevitable. My heart has accepted that it has to move on to follow on its trail, at long last. And – or rather, however – some lessons, even as the way I remember changes, will always endure.

Here is one of the lessons I have learnt about time:

For those standing in the first lines of battle, time is not taken in years, months, weeks, or even just days. Time becomes life, and life is measured in less than seconds at the worst and hours at the best. And the minutes lying in between pile up until they stick together to form an unidentifiable mass that balances on the line of survival. 

* * *

Almost all of the survivors of the Battle of Ettersberg were, by now, spread across hospitals in London – those who had managed to cut through the heart of Nazi Germany to reach the Western Front as well as those who got hold of a place on a glider. 

A fraction, no, less than a slice of a fraction of those who had been sent in. 

As far as Thomas was informed, he had been the last one of the attack force to be accounted for alive. 

“Reports say you stumbled across a Yank squad patrolling the frontline somewhere along the western region of the Moselle river, sir. Near Trier,” said Private Oswald during a short visit; just before he proceeded to explain that he was bound to return to the field as Corporal.

“I can’t just – it seems impossible to sit here, sir,” he said; seated on a chair, and fidgeting with his hands in apparent agitation. “I need to _do_ something. Anything. It’s… there is… it’s so quiet here, sir. I know it must sound quite bizarre. But… the quiet. It’s quiet enough to be so – so _unbearably_ loud that I can’t – I can’t read. I can’t eat, and I can’t sleep…”

He trailed off with the words catching inside his throat. 

A horrendous gap had been ripped into all ranks of their Regiment. Regular losses had been a common occurrence before Ettersberg already, but now – even with arbitrary promotions – there were far too many vacancies to ever hope to fill up again before the end of the war. The exception being that the Nazis would hold out for another twenty years or so. 

Oswald was still a boy with barely any experience save for Arnhem and an awfully short deployment period in the interim of Market Garden and Spatchcock to show. 

And yet, his deep-set eyes, a once-glowing pale blue, had been rendered far too dull and haunted for his age. 

Hugh Oswald wasn’t a boy anymore. 

Thomas had always taken his position as Commanding Officer most to heart when concerned with the nurture and protection of his men. His first impulse was to provide the required support; just as he’d done so many times before, above all for the younger lads in question. 

In the end, that was the sole purpose still left for him. To be strong for those who had managed to stagger home, for those who had to grow up too soon, for those who had seen their lives dissolve between their fingers and drain throughout hands cupped in desperation. There was barely anything left of him worth saving, so he could still, at least, try to do as much as he could to make it easier for the other survivors. 

_(Encourage him. Provide stability. A clear line to walk. Only forward. No doubts. There could never be doubts, or they were dead.)_

Now, he found himself staring at Oswald down an alignment that had once been straightforward, yet had become shrouded in what appeared to be a thick curtain of mist. 

His temples were throbbing with violence and made it impossible to formulate something that would make sense in the grander scheme. Even so, he attempted to say a comforting phrase. But the fever had rendered his lips cracked and swollen, and as he moved them, they would not give way to words. 

In the end, the only thing he achieved was to relocate his left arm and put his hand over Oswald’s. The gesture proved to be painful, and slow. The strength in his fingers did not suffice to extend any sort of pressure, and he did not know who the one of them was that trembled.

 _‘Take care,’_ he mouthed. 

Hugh Oswald nodded as a pair of tears chased themselves down his cheeks, and then fled the room; leaving Thomas helpless, hollow, and with an alarming stretch of obscureness undermining the puzzle that made up his sanity.

_How had he ended up near Trier? How had he crossed the Mosel?_

There was nothing more but echoes of screams and whispers, jarring flashes of oversaturated colours and dots of black and white.

And there was the ever-present cold as he _put one foot in front of the other, again, again, again; putting himself in pain, voluntarily, again, again, again; breath after breath after breath,_

_again,_

_again,_

_again._

_I need to get back._

_What was it all for if not for that?_

He couldn’t recall what ‘that’ was, either. 

What he _could_ remember, though, was that Oswald had been injured at the landing zone. Caffrey had been the one to drag him on a glider while he had supplied cover. For the first time, Thomas asked himself how many weeks must have passed – a couple at the very least, if Oswald’s wounds had healed enough to rejoin. 

Yet, an independent estimate proved to be impossible. 

_‘How long?’_ he mouthed to no-one but himself and that brickstone ceiling. 

No answer was forthcoming. 

Everything he gained from the question of time was the sudden sight of the bloody mass of butchered flesh that had once been Caffrey’s right arm, and his Lieutenant’s weakening breaths, and the utter senselessness surrounding them, slowly transforming the Ettersberg into a charnel house.

It was his sister Alice who eventually told him about the five weeks that had passed since the 19th of January. 

“Three weeks,” she said, with deep lines and black circles etched around her eyes. “From the notice that you were alive until the medics deemed you stable enough to be relocated to London.”

A simple calculation that took him far too long to make resulted in about two weeks he had taken to cross over the front lines.

He stared at her, then the ceiling. The shapes began to blend together. He tried to comprehend what that meant. Attempted to translate it into minutes, transform it into the indecipherable mass that was life. But everything suddenly gave the impression of being indefinitely diminished and discontinuously protracted, and in the end, all slipped away into nothing but a blurry jitter. 

It seemed that Ettersberg had made it outright absurd to process anything – even time – after. 

As if it had been broken apart. 

* * *

If you listen, please do keep in mind that the answers don’t always make sense. 

And when I first understood, it was horrifying – but sometimes, they are simply not meant to.

_How long?_

The answer:

Chaos.

* * *

Although a small calendar stubbornly continued to try and educate him about the fact that it was early March, Thomas still had not regained a grasp on time. On the contrary. The further Ettersberg moved away, even the sole categorisation of things his mind spewed out at him began to fail; and the haze of morphine dulling it all did not help with the succumbing of his consciousness.

It did not help at all. 

_(Panic. His grasp on magic, slipping away. The control over his thoughts, slipping away. Fear, nightmares. Or reality? No way to tell apart. No way to defend himself.)_

_(Make it stop, please. I can’t take this any longer.)_

Making it as far as Trier on foot had been a feat of utter stupendousness. That he had recovered from the brink of death a good deal more. This was what stood written into his medical records. And it was what he was told, time and time again. 

By cauterising the wounds, he had saved his life short-term: but even so, he had been deprived of considerable amounts of blood. And what had kept a patch of half-frozen earth of the German _Westerwald_ from soaking his body dry only made it all worse in the long run. 

After he had collapsed in front of the GIs, they dragged him to their next-best field hospital. Even though the medics there had, justifiably enough, termed him a lost cause already, emergency measures were taken, and he had gotten shoved into a truck and sent onwards to the nearest medical centre equipped to do specialised surgery and able to handle prolonged treatment of critical cases.

Although the Yanks went as far as to use their new wonder drug on him, the burns developed gangrene. The infection went deeper, turned to sepsis, spread. Blood transfusions did not seem to do a damn thing. Fever had wreaked too much damage inside his body already. An onset of pneumonia developed. 

All they thought they could do was to numb the pain and let him pass over.

But he just would not die. Even as all his organs turned against him, even as his very flesh was rotting away: The whole of him was a parasite that simply did not cease to leech off life. 

_A miracle_ , they said.

As if he should feel grateful. 

Thomas could only remember one thing about this first week at the US evacuation hospital in Luxembourg City. How the massacre inside his body appeared to reach him everywhere, and how he just begged for it to end.

_Make it stop. Please, make it stop._

Somewhere before Arnhem, before the Nazis finally managed to trap him and skimmed within an inch of torturing him to death, there must have been a day when he had been free of pain. Or where it was at least not one of the predominant things wearing away at his nerves. 

He could not remember anymore what this day had felt like, as much as he could not keep track of single days.

And later, he never asked precisely which day it had been. The day he had been told.

* * *

Before I proceed, you must understand this: 

Throughout the war, I have, too often, ended up in a position where I had seen no alternative but to beg my friend to save me. Too often to be able to behold my own life and name it a miracle. 

(Oh. I have never mentioned who this particular friend is, have I?)

(Well, it’s death.)

(But do not worry.)

(I hated them. They took so many:)

(But not me.)

* * *

Veterans of Ettersberg who rejoined the battlefield – even in non-active combat positions – had been the extreme minority. As I understood, only a meagre handful of some brave and loyal NCOs had done so. 

I have never come across any proof of one of my fellow COs setting foot back into mainland Europe in an army function. 

Next to those who hadn’t either been murdered, indefinitely hospitalised, or had returned to the theatre of war, there were, of course, those who immediately broke their staves to leave service and to reunite with their families – if they possessed any. The vast bulk of those who were released from either hospital or sanatorium in a state that at least resembled some sort of physical rehabilitation did as well. They all received an honourable discharge – thank the Lord. I would not have put it past Folly High Command – the spineless bastards – to force those who were able to fight on. 

Not that I think many would have had an inch of care left about their reputation after what they had experienced and seen. 

I have never put blame on anyone for leaving magic and everything that was associated with it behind. Even if it meant that at the end of it all, Molly and I remained at the Folly on our own.

As there is one thing that is certain: For no-one of us, it has, and would ever have been the same path. 

Everyone had to choose. Everyone had to do what seemed right for them. Yes, nobody could understand better what one went through than another veteran, but still, every experience set each other apart to incognizable degrees. 

Who would I be if I were to judge?

To move on: it almost appeared to be easy for some. For others, it was a downward curve that had never ended – unless they put an end to it themselves. And for most, the curve was a steady rise and fall: Never linear, a long-term tendency always unpredictable. 

I have spent more than a human lifetime struggling to figure it out. 

(Or, rather:)

(I stopped trying, and only began to re-examine the process as Peter came into my life.)

Never have I seen actual direction. Certainly not while moving on, and not anywhere else also.

Never have I felt any of this extraordinary valour with which _the Nightingale_ had been attributed so often. Neither perseverance in the face of endless horror. Thrown back and forth inside the throes of chaotic battle, it is highly probable that I have always been as clueless as each and every one. 

The only thing I know I _have_ done – invariably – is this:

What I had to do, to the best of my abilities. 

And when my person had more and more been warped into what _the Nightingale_ had to be, I had continued to do so and hoped that it would be enough to rise up to be the symbol they had needed. 

There came a point where I could not allow myself to be anything else. And as my wings were assembled of feathers made of fear and weariness, just like everyone else’s, I had no option left but to make death my friend.

Maybe that was what kept me leeching on to life. 

Maybe that was the thing which, at the crossroads, had made the difference for me. 

_(Two paths to decide between: One that was short and led into an irreversible freefall. One that was indefinite and unforeseeable.)_

Nobody ever explicitly told me about all the suicides – not before David, in any case – but even in my horrible state, I had known better. And everyone else in my presence must have realised so. It did not take a shattering cataclysm as Ettersberg to drive someone to the brink; already before the war, I had seen a fair share of persons after they had put an end to their lives, as well as witnessing the act itself. 

During the war, such occurrences had become more frequent. 

This does not imply that I may be able to provide a correct retelling. When something becomes frequent, it does not automatically yield routine.

Etched into my memories is not as much the situation as compared to the plunge of ice throughout my body as my mind tried to catch up. You rarely see them coming, and there is a very specific component about it that remains beyond one’s comprehension – always. 

This is how I remember: my mind circling itself in a race that was already lost, trying to catch up with the unattainable. 

It was old Murville who told me. 

The poor man. 

I feel ashamed that now, whenever I think of him, this is the first association I draw. Not to what he taught me. There is not his distant, yet kind and steadfast presence throughout my former life. Nor his face, or his voice, both of which are sliding out of grasp as the years pass; 

and pass; 

and pass.

Not even the bravery to take this burden upon him. 

But this is how I remember.

* * *

His first governor was one of the rare persons who had come to visit him repeatedly. He belonged to that very specific group of the Folly practitioners – those who had been too old to fight or been exempted from conscription, had not been involved in any sort of command activities, and when the worst came to the worst, still aligned with those standing in opposition to Spatchcock. This meant that Thomas had a basis left upon which he could trust him and that whenever Murville sat down on the wooden chair next to his bed, it didn’t carry the painful particularity of sharing the room with another veteran. 

The pressure of being able to take it; standing steadfast in the wake of what they had gone through at Ettersberg, and the five endless years preceding the battle. 

Of being _the Nightingale._

_(Die Nachtigall and de Nachtegaal. L’Usignolo and le Rossignol. Most of Europe had been humdrum. It had been the Soviets who had called him Птица, которая приносит смерть на его крыльях: The bird who brings death on his wings.)_

There also was a lesser feeling of shame about him still not having regained his ability to speak, let alone converse, properly, as compared to when he dwelled in the presence of someone to whom he was – had been – a commanding officer. 

The point where he had stopped must be somewhen after that sniper had gotten him near Koblenz. After he had burnt the wounds closed. 

_(Pain, black, white.)_

After he had, to all appearances, followed the flow of the Mosel upstream – until he had reached Trier. 

_(Step, another step. Don’t lie down. Don’t scream, cry, whimper. Don’t make a noise. They’ll hear you. One more step. You won’t stand up again if you lie down now. Just… one… more…_

_… step.)_

The symptom had fully manifested by the point he had regained proper consciousness at the evacuation hospital – to an extreme where he couldn’t even say his own name. The one doctor who had not shaken the head at him in contempt had diagnosed him with a severe exhibition of combat fatigue, provided him with a notebook and a pencil and advised him to avoid stress and to relax so the onset could pass. 

Which was not yet the case.

But Murville did not appear to be bothered or harbour any sort of repugnance for his apparent debilitation of the body and mind. There was no awkwardness to the slow back and forth of trying to lead a conversation by the means of weak gestures and writing on paper. And as such, especially when he realised that Murville came far more often of own volition rather than on official Folly business, it was a welcome occurrence whenever the man decided to sacrifice his time to spend it in his company. 

Everything was superior to being alone with himself. 

Until that day it wasn’t.

After exchanging vaguely about petty matters, Murville folded his hands inside his lap. He turned his eyes towards them before he began to speak. 

“Lad, there is something I must tell you.”

In general, this was a sentence he had heard far too often as a predecessor for more than unfortunate revelations – and Murville’s voice, deep and slow, forbade nothing good. 

But there was little avail to beat about the bush, and thus Thomas inclined his head and made a small flick with his left hand, indicating him to cut straight to it. 

Whatever Murville wanted to tell him could not worsen the cursed hell that had already transpired.

* * *

I was in the wrong. 

As I am so often.

* * *

A long moment of silence followed, and the old man visibly fought with the next sentence. He only continued after a sigh that seemed to carry the burden of the world. 

His eyes were still turned away. 

“Now, look, I thought very long on how I was going to tell you. Fact is, there is no right… there is no fair, no good way to go about this.”

Murville’s hesitation was written into his every movement. He shifted, blinked, and only when he straightened his back and stiffened his shoulders into the vertical line of the police inspector, wavering morphed into resolve.

* * *

I remember him lifting his chin and looking me directly into the eyes. There was pain and an unspoken apology.

Maybe he had presumed.

* * *

“There has been another suicide.”

Numbers tallying the casualty figures of Operation Spatchcock raced through Thomas’ head, jumbled together with clattering letters of names of persons he had shared his life with. Had hated and befriended and crossed paths with. Had forged bonds with, that had held, like a steadfast bulwark, throughout the labyrinth of earth turned upside down. 

Numbers which he failed to comprehend. Like the minutes, his patterns of categorisation, keeping him sane as the list of victims grew longer and longer throughout the war, had ceased to suffice. 

There were only shards of ice plunging through his body. 

“It happened weeks ago, but we thought it would be sensible to refrain from telling you until you were better in health. Even so, I do not believe that this should be kept from you any longer.”

Somehow, at that moment, Thomas knew.

* * *

I knew, even despite my mind circling and circling and not forming any tangible thought. As if it was a trivial banality which I, nonetheless – as everything else – failed to translate from my subconsciousness. 

Maybe I knew because Murville had seen the two of us grow up to be that unlikely, but inseparable pair. Because there was no one else of the Folly I had known to be alive still and not back in the theatre whose death Murville – or anyone – could presume to have such a desperate effect on me to decide not to tell me until I might be in a state where I could take it.

Far more probable is that I had known because he hadn’t visited me once. That the suspicion had been there before: but I had still denied myself the thought.

We had promised each other to meet again, after all, as we parted ways on the Ettersberg. 

Then again:

We had promised each other so many things, had we not? We had sworn each other vows I had thought to be everlasting.

This lesson I have only truly learnt upon hearing the damning words, and my last thread snapping apart. (Although I must have come to its conclusion far earlier on.)

There are ~~three~~ four rules to that lesson:

Each thing can fall apart.

Love can turn into an insurmountable chasm of broken trust.

Loss is certain.

But such is the path of life. 

* * *

“Mellenby,” said Murville. “He killed himself. He locked himself into his lab and put a bullet through his head.”

In Thomas’ memories, all that remained written was this: The blackness and the bleak words upon them – white-hot and searing. 

* * *

Apparently, I took it with an eerie calm, or – I am assured – Murville would not have left me to my own devices shortly thereafter. I even think that he came fully prepared to deal with every kind of reaction save for precisely the one I exhibited. In hindsight, I myself am more than astonished that back there, my mind had enough grasp left on the remainders of its robotic emergency state that I still find myself reverting to when faced with extremes. 

The callousness and safety of one lifeless order executed after the other. 

I even had the presence to send Murville away. At least that was what the little notebook told me when I found the ability to re-read this particular sentence of blocked, messy handwriting. _‘Thank you for making me aware. You can go now’_ , it stated. 

Murville must have thought me very cold. 

Apparently, I had also fractured open three knuckles of my right and two of my left hand approximately ten minutes after Murville had walked out of the room. 

The nurses had been alerted by my ear-splitting screams and had ensured that I had gotten strapped down before I succeeded in breaking various more, but rather life-essential parts of my body; and even then, I had to be sedated for an additional three full days as I brutally attempted to attack everyone who tried to approach me, lest touch me.

Again it was Alice who told me, as I could not, for the life of me, remember anything that was less than seven days after what I later only termed ‘the incident’.

(She only did after I asked her to. I regret doing so. I had already put her through too much.)

And after what felt like an eternity – when I found that I could feel again, feel with my own consciousness and not with the emotions and memories randomly overwhelming the void, the emptiness that filled me otherwise, and tearing me apart without warning; when I could do more than simply stare at the ceiling in apathy, I remember that I thought of this blank patch like this:

A small mercy which I did not deserve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I officially am deserving of a few cookie crumbles for formatting this in AO3.
> 
> \--
> 
> CO is a military acronym for Commissioned Officer; NCO for Non-commissioned Officer. 
> 
> The mentioned 'wonder drug' is penicillin, the first discovered antibiotic. And yes - there truly was a US army evacuation hospital in Luxembourg City in Jan/Feb 1945 (The 12th Evac Hospital). 
> 
> There are huge amounts of headcanon in this (specifically re: Arnhem, and that Nightingale was captured there and held prisoner for some time) - but I'm always very intent to make sure that it doesn't contradict given canon!  
> A little bit more context is established in part 1 & 2 of 'der verstand steht still', but most of it still hasn't been written. I'm working on it, though. Pre-Ettersberg might be coming after all :) It will just take LOADS of time.
> 
> \--
> 
> The first draft of this was done in 2019 when I was in a very dark place; in many parts, this accurately reflects/projects some of the worst emotional experiences of my life and is thus very personal. I crossposted a rough draft of this to first tumblr, then slightly more polished to AO3, but deleted both posts during the past year as my mental health crumbled and I withdrew myself from fandom for a while. 
> 
> However, I found myself coming back to this story again and again; like a magnet. I continued, despite myself, to do small changes, then did a whole massive re-write in October 2020, and during this process slowly realised that this might be the most profound and honest things I've ever written. If it is the best or the actual worst, I honestly don't know. I only know that it is something different, and I hope that this - and especially the following chapters - resonate within some of you.
> 
> Remember: There is always hope. There is always a way to return to feel alive, even after you've ended up shattered on the ground.  
> Here is to all of you out there who courageously continue to stumble along the path and pick up the pieces. No matter in which way. 
> 
> I'm sending love & hugs, and thank you for reading. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts on this work!
> 
> (PS: ALL of this is already written and will be posted in due time. Just to reassure you, seeing as my record with multi-chapter fics isn't that good :) )


	2. a path there will be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another lesson:  
> There is no luck in war.  
> There is also no way to cheat death.   
> There are only the dead. And those who continue to exist with the regrets.

Птица, которая приносит смерть на его крыльях.

The Soviets had been right. I was anything but an idle singing bird. 

I was so much worse. And so much more.

What was hidden away from the world has never been singing: I either chanted, or I roared. I either cried out loud or susurrated to nobody but myself.

There was no middle way. 

They had realised long before anyone else – myself, even – that on the battlefield, death was my constant companion. 

In one manner or the other, this had applied to all of us, of course. There was never any illusion about that. No illusion that at any moment whatsoever, one of us could be the chosen next. 

Oftentimes, it took nothing but a fated concurrence for it to happen. 

For us soldiers, this meant being at the wrong place at the wrong second, turning the head left but not right, deciding whether to stop and throw one’s body to the ground for cover or to close the eyes and barrel forward through bullets hailing from all sides – mere fragments of heartbeats, and yet of such massive importance that the challenge to master these moments in favour of life seemed nothing but unfair. 

In the very beginning of the war, subjecting my actions during a battle under the due respect these circumstances demanded had only felt appropriate. Then, I had not been prone to gamble with fate. I had attempted to follow logic. 

It needed those secret missions into the East and Leningrad to pose myself the following question:

How does one translate the  _ vestigium  _ of death? And how does one translate it when it is death upon death upon death upon death – thousand-fold, ten-thousand-fold, compressed into a single space, a horrifyingly short amount of time?

When it is death mixed with fear 

and fear 

and fear 

and fear,

crying children, 

screaming mothers, 

begging fathers?

The answer:

You simply do not. 

It is unfathomable. Inenarrable. 

I have learnt the following lesson:

There is no logic in war.

This lesson manifested in absolute as my temperance in battle gradually began to morph into all but a foreign whisper – despite constantly being juxtaposed with the possibility of my death. And I held on to it: Used to charge without a second thought for myself. Drowned my fear in determination and straightforward intention. 

I have not been the only one.

Nobody had been certain what to term this streak of character; whatever trait was suitable to be attributed to such creatures as I. Bravery was too moderate a word to fit in correspondence with the sheer insanity some of us displayed, and thus, we were said to have struck a bargain with death. 

We had already delivered ourselves into the cold embrace, had learnt the art of how to die to become a weapon of war; knew how to die and to nevertheless walk on alive. 

We were there for this sole purpose: To act, when no one else could. To function, when everyone else was frozen. Who did whatever needed to be done – fast and precise and without regrets to twist our minds when we were asked to do what no one should ever have to bear. 

That’s what has been said. 

The only thing I know for sure is that it became only natural for me to use this art of how to die to prevent more souls from being chosen. I used it because I realised that with it, I could prevent more beings from being lost than I could ever dream of by mere virtue of strategy and thought. I used it to keep at least a tiny amount of regret away from those surrounding me. 

No-one else should have to ever feel what I did. What ripped me apart on the insides.

I, like everyone else, also knew one other thing:

That there would be a point where death would return to lay a claim on us, their friends, and exact a toll on us soldiers who knew how to die. When one day, one fragment of a heartbeat, chance would break its back under the bargain’s weight to deliver us, those who fought as if they were already dead, into death’s welcoming arms. 

Another lesson:

There is no luck in war.

There is also no way to cheat death.

There are only the dead. And those who continue to exist with the regrets.

* * *

It was only with months of hindsight that Thomas was able to approximate that the first proper tears must have fallen about three weeks after the incident, and eleven weeks after Ettersberg. 

He found himself strapped down still, but also with regaining proficiency to follow and comprehend simple sentences. The feral need to strangle every person trying to change the bandages around his waist and hands, or wanting to make him drink and eat, had mostly subsided. 

Hence, Alice had been allowed to come. She presented the first familiar visit since the incident, and even if he’d rather not have her seeing him like this under any circumstances, he was glad that she did – at long last, a face that didn’t regard him with either sorrow, pity, disgust, or a mix of all three. 

She spoke of nothing in particular, and in any case, nothing he could properly recall a minute later. Moreover, she did not ask him how he was, which was a relief. 

Then she drew a briefcase out of her handbag. The contents included a drawing done by Mary, and Alice told him how she was thrilled for the warmer season and attending school. 

“She is tremendously excited to demonstrate her new bike. And beginning to exhibit frightening amounts of your ability to break traffic regulations and a not-so-amusing need for speed." Alice gave one of her long-suffering big-sister-sighs before she continued. “That said, I suppose letting her accompany me during regular trips with the motorbike didn't serve as any kind of good role model behaviour. Just as well as having  _ your _ undue influence around.”

A very odd feeling arose when the muscles in his face moved in some sort of subconscious reaction, and it took Thomas a sluggish few seconds until he realised that his lips had made a failed attempt at a smile. 

Alice seemed to notice nevertheless and smiled in return. 

After a curt exchange of looks with the nurse who stood in a corner of the room to observe the visit, Alice procured something else from the briefcase. A small stack of letters appeared and was placed on the nightstand. 

“Inspector Murville approached me a few days ago and gave me these. One of them is written by Molly, and the others, well, most of them are Get Well-wishes by the surv-... by the men of your company. We told them your wound has re-infected and caused you to relapse to high fever, and that you had to be left alone to recuperate.” She repeated her smile. It was faint but encouraging. “But I have heard that some are eager to visit as soon as you are better in health.”

Thomas felt his head turn slowly – towards the letters, then back to Alice.

* * *

Probably, it had been Murville's name which connected the dots – had been the reminder of the incident, and what I had been told.

* * *

Thomas blinked and wriggled with the fingers of his left hand. His right was too ruined to yet try to hold a pen. 

It took a moment for Alice to comprehend what he wanted to express, but once she did, the emotions on her face flickered from surprised to beaming. She grabbed the notebook from the nightstand and carefully slid a pencil between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Next, she opened a blank page of the notebook and adjusted it at the correct angle on the mattress so he could write onto the paper despite the restraints around his wrist fixing his arm to the bed. 

Finishing the sentence cost him as much effort as it must have done to walk those solitary, destitute, godforsaken miles from Koblenz to Trier – or at least, it seemed like it did – and after he had, the pencil fell out of his shaking fingers and Thomas was sure that his head must have tried to split itself apart. 

A long stretch of silence befell them, and through blurred eyesight, Thomas perceived Alice bringing up a hand to her mouth before giving the nurse the opened page of the notebook to read. Some words were exchanged. 

* * *

Maybe the nurse had told Alice not to answer – not truthfully, anyhow. Nonetheless, if there was only one bloody thing that I had known for certain still, it was that I could trust Alice – that she would tell me. That she would not deny me. Because she was aware, more so than anyone else, of what David had been to me once. 

I had to make sure. 

Maybe, maybe, just maybe – maybe it had just been a horrible dream fabricated by my morbid mind.

* * *

(It was not.)

* * *

A warm hand placed itself upon Thomas’ chest, gingerly and gentle, on dry skin furrowed with scars, pulled taut over his ribs sticking out from beneath it; before going up to come to rest on his stubbled and gaunt cheek, a soft, caring, loving touch in-between the cold of January Germany still freezing his bones. 

At that moment, somehow, Thomas knew. 

“I’m sorry, baby brother,” whispered Alice. “But it’s true. Mellenby is – he is dead.” 

Thomas blinked. 

And then, he shut his eyes, and for one moment, he begged that he’d never have to open them again. Proving him for just the coward he was. 

But the tears came anyway. Proving him for just the pathetic fool he was.

* * *

It was also the only time that I begged for death while Alice was near.

What I did not anticipate was that Alice had made acquaintance with death also. 

I had been such an idiot. Even though she had never set foot on a physical battlefield, how could she not, when she observed me applying my knowledge of how to die more often and more readily than anyone else?

Contrary to my enemies and my allies – the soldiers, lads, officers and masters alike – she did not admire it. 

She had always seen right through the plumage of  _ the bird who brings death on his wings. _

Never had she soothed her fear for the lives of those she loved with naiveté. Never had she observed  _ the Nightingale _ and his invincibility: I know that she had always seen  _ me  _ – that her admiration had fully belonged to the man beneath. In all his vulnerability, and all his mortality. 

Fear had always been something that Alice embraced. 

And death?

Death had been no friend. Instead, she had stood, fought, and stared them right down into the eyes. She tiptoed a deadly dance with them long before I attempted to strike my deal. 

Her whispers and prayers as I lay asleep next to her while she sat by my bedside – there in actuality or in the imaginative alone – reach me only in my dreams these days.

But they still do:

_ Do not take him. Everyone, myself. But not him. _

And death continued to mark me and tried to lay their bargained claim a great many times: Again and again, as I repeatedly managed to emerge more or less unscathed when compared to the impossibility of the deeds I brought forth while being confronted with the most atrocious odds. 

But they did not take me by their hand.

And as I remember the glow in her eyes, I know that in some intangible way, it must have been Alice who did. Who saved me from having to complete my contract; over and over, and yet emerged alive.

I will never forget her ability to hold her fear close. For her, it was never an emotion to be defeated. To her, it was fear that was the friend: All emotions were her friends. She held hers and those of all persons surrounding her; and she held, nurtured mine as I could not. Joy, Grief, Love and Hate. 

She took them as they were; embraced them, and walked on in spite; and managed to let go when it was time. What I had to batten onto in excruciating steps, she had always done without any kind of hesitation. 

Maybe that had been what had made the difference for her at all these crossroads she must have had to face, and during all the dances she had twirled with death being led by her hands.

And I have yet to encounter such tremendous courage once more.

* * *

Alice held Thomas as he wept freely, bitterly, with sobs wrecking his body; held him until he fell unconscious with exhaustion; held him so he was able to hide his face inside her beige blouse, unable to cover it himself with his strapped down arms. 

It was the only thing able to anchor him in the fact that he wasn’t back on the screeching battlefields of Africa, in the frozen hells of the East and Leningrad, wading through the mercilessness of Italy or the corpse-riddled beaches and hedgerows of Normandy; that he wasn't back in the house-to-house nightmare of Arnhem, and wasn’t back in these cells and encapsulated in all the agony that followed.

The only thing able to tell him that he wasn’t back standing in-between the burning forests covering the Ettersberg, yelling at David, shaking his shoulders, shoving him to move it and get on the fucking glider; and the only thing able to keep him from slipping away completely, as stupefying, suffocating grief threatened to drown him. For all the men, the boys, all his friends killed and cut down and murdered right there, right next to him. 

He hadn’t been able to save them. 

He hadn't been able to save so many throughout the war – soldiers, civilians, children, countless lives extinguished right before his eyes, just out of his reach – if only he'd just been a little faster, a little more precise, a little more proficient. 

He hadn’t been able to save any of the prisoners confined upon the Ettersberg either. 

In the end, he hadn’t even been able to save David Mellenby. 

Why was he alive when they all had to die? 

“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” said Alice, again and again, while the tears didn’t stop to flow after he had kept them at bay for so long. “I am so, so sorry.” 

At that moment, Thomas felt himself stop falling. And it wasn’t a safety net catching him for a night of dreamless sleep, or a branch he shortly managed to cling onto, or a tiny, last thread of hope. 

At long last, he hit the ground and shattered like a brittle statue made of glass; one that had already been cracked and stuck back together too often. 

And then began the never-ending process of picking up the pieces. 

* * *

Of course, it hadn’t only been due to mere ignorance as such that nobody had told me until it became unavoidable: Neither of David’s morphine-induced decline into oblivion during the aftermath of Operation Spatchcock as he tried and ultimately, failed to sort through the files of the steel drawer labelled EB1945/1; nor the fact that he finalised matters by sending a bullet through his head. 

I am assured that before the final weeks already, enough cracks had been visible for outsiders to begin questioning if our friendship still held. Even I am long since not convinced anymore if David, at his centre core, had ever truly believed in me: our disagreement over Operation Spatchcock had been the final nails in the door that had years before begun to close on what I had once thought to be an unbreakable connection.

Thus, the fact that they bided their time for so long could have indeed been because they had thought, especially after our awfully public and more than earth-shaking fallout preceding Ettersberg, that we would not care about each other’s suffering as to warrant a call to attention.

Yet, I had to come to reject this idea also as I am confronting the half-truths I had lulled myself into. 

Even after Ettersberg, there had been a handful of honest and loyal men left around me; and there had been those rare persons who had been privy to the whole truth. 

It had not been the ignorance of the arrogant many who had supported Spatchcock and coerced the opposing few into compliance to carry out a suicide mission wrought by hubris – only to salt the earth after catastrophe had been brought about.

Rather, it had been the handful who had cared, and had done everything to shelter me from what they were aware would quite likely send me over the edge as well. 

It had been because they had seen me; and had thought me too fragile. 

Today I am fully cognizant of the fact that they had been right to do so. I was more than fragile; I was barely more than a porcelain shell. To be perfectly frank, any moment to tell me would have, indubitably, turned out to be the wrong one.

Alas, as usual, the what-if’s crept back out of the abyss. 

What might have happened if somebody had made me alert of David’s state before he had taken the irreversible step? Would I have had the strength to reach out? Could  _ this _ catastrophe, at the very least, have been prevented? 

If someone had compelled David to come to visit me just once, there would have been a possibility to attempt an exchange. 

It could have been an insignificant moment turned into small, nagging thoughts; these, which oftentimes grow in moments of final decision to provide an insurmountable hurdle. 

It could have stopped David from pulling the trigger. 

By all means, I am not foolish enough to think that a single meeting would have taken away from the guilt that had gnawed at David especially, in addition to the desperation and the darkness that had consumed each and everyone who had returned from both Ettersberg and the war with their bodies alive and their minds destroyed. Nor, really, would it have given rise to resolving anything of what had happened and had towered between us. The wounds had been too profound to simply scab over; they would not heal in a single hour, a day, or even a year.

As my own guilt about David’s fate has begun to recede across the decades spanning my memories at long last, and the struggle to think and examine my emotions in a rational manner has become possible through the stability that my new family and eventually professional therapy imparted, I came to the conclusion that there was no way I could have ever – in all of the undefinable eternity which still remained – _ forgiven _ him in full. As much as I would have liked to. 

Even so, there could have been some sort of _ reconciliation _ .

In some measure, it could have given me the possibility to try extending my forgiveness to the person who once meant the world to me; and would have given each of us more closure on the path to find forgiveness for ourselves. To let go. 

It could have been that tiny bit kinder. It could have made healing – picking up the pieces – a tiny bit easier. 

All that was taken away. Irrevocably.

A piece that remained lost – forever.

Whilst I know better than doing so – since the past is done and I do not belong there anymore – there are these rare occasions where I catch myself wishing for a just a smattering of minutes to step back in time, merely to tell David and all those other crushed souls of all the moments I had begged for peace and had not been heard; about all those junctures where I had considered ending it all myself. How it was not the bond to my own life, but the duty to others and the desire to not cause them any pain, the desire to extend courage to them when I could not find it for myself, which kept me trudging onwards. 

And about how despite that, I have continued to uncover the horrifying, howbeit exquisite truth of just another lesson: 

Even when you are tired to death, holding on to life may yet turn out to be worthwhile.

In spite of how impossible it may seem, there will, eventually, be a path forward. Maybe not in the ways one would imagine, or even like. 

But, with time mending itself, a path there will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who noticed - I am aware that the Western Allies did not undertake action in the Eastern theatre of the Second World War (were forbidden to do, actually). I ran with the idea of Western practitioners possibly - despite - acting on secret operations in the East going by the small fact that one of Nightingale's Casterbrook peers (Donny Shanks) survived the Siege of Leningrad (as mentioned in Moon over Soho). 
> 
> Again; I'm sending love & hugs, and thank you for reading this chapter. Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts on this work! 
> 
> (And I hope you like Alice. :) )


	3. the long walk home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With tedious and endless weeks wasting away, I gradually grew uncertain if I actually desired to do so.   
> To understand.  
> Maybe it was all better left shrouded in incomprehension, hidden in a dark corner and forgotten.   
> Thus, all I did had been to crawl on through the mud until I got to a dry patch of land.   
> And for the longest time, merely lying there and not actively suffocating seemed like the best I would ever regain.

There were so many terrifying patches of lost and suppressed memory remaining from the war, resurfacing at arbitrary to haunt him and otherwise staying submerged in deep and muddled waters; but what he would always remember was what David had once told him when Thomas had returned to Britain after Arnhem.

David had held his face fixed between his hands and Thomas’ attention pinned down by the sparkle of his amber eyes – forcing him to listen. 

_ ‘Whatever happens, whatever will come, whatever time will bring, you are the most extraordinary man I have ever had the good fortune to encounter, and I believe that you can overcome anything. No one, nothing, could truly break you.’  _

Then, they had kissed and made love. And even though Thomas hadn’t been able to sleep afterwards due to the pain of the wounds carved into his body and soul, it had still been a small moment of unlikely peace as he had stood, naked, looking out of the opened rooftop window and overseeing the night-time landscape of Blitz-wrecked London; smoking a cigarette and with David resting his head on his shoulder and holding him in a tender embrace, the warmth of their combined bodies keeping away the cool autumn air. 

For these few minutes, there had been no war, no battles, no terrors, no burdens and responsibility; no hate and anger between them – none of all those things that had torn them apart. 

They had been allowed to be just Thomas and just David, after all. 

Who knows what would have become of the two of them, had the war not happened?

But endless possibilities had been turned to dust.

He would never see him again. Never hear his voice again. 

Never feel his touch again, those fingertips which had, once upon a time, managed to warm him to his innermost core – a core where now, nothing except the chill of war, the empty noise turned to crushing silence, the cold of the long walk home remained.

Thomas recognised the crossroads sprawling out before him, and it was then that he had to make his own decision. 

He had never reached it consciously. It was more akin to floating without direction, submerged in deep waters as he drowned; listening to a trickle that reminded him of  _ dying, surviving, fighting. _

_ Even if I can’t. _

The long walk home was, it appeared, not over yet. 

And as this time, walking proved too hard – he did not even find the strength to stand up – Thomas decided that there was no other option left but to crawl.

It was humiliating. 

But he dragged himself upon his knees and crawled.

In the memory of all those he had failed to save, all those that had fallen to the relentlessness of war. For the survivors, and the remaining few that saw something inside him. 

Thus, once the doctors offered to release him from the straps if he’d not struggle when being fed and watered, he had nodded. 

And he had managed to refrain from struggling. Managed to allow himself to live on. 

It took time, but from day to day, he tried to eat a little more, even when the food tasted of nothing, even with the smell of burnt flesh and blood still clinging to his nostrils after the regular nightmares had rendered him sick. However, every time he didn’t vomit was a small success, and sometime during April, the nerve damage had receded to a point where he, once enough vigour had been gathered, was able to use a wheelchair. It permitted him to move up and down the hallway to a window and assure himself that actual sunlight still existed outside his imagination, and eat at least somewhat regularly; all while attempting to entertain an outwards image of stability to those visitors that weren’t Alice. 

The woodcarving had been an idea of the only nurse left who wasn’t too frightened to undertake the night watch inside his room and try to shake him awake before he sent fireballs flying – something which still occurred far too often and therefore kept him stuck in a purely stone- and iron-walled cellar room of St Thomas’ hospital. 

There was the primary idea of further supporting a neurological recovery, and helping him re-establish some better function inside his fingers, especially concerning his now entirely ruined right hand. Also, the nurse surmised that it could be another way to help with the shell shock. Encourage him to take up a hobby, and such. 

(Give him something to do except to stare at books when he became too exhausted to read on beyond the first two pages.) 

Thomas actually found that he liked the idea – as much as he could like anything these days. Working with his hands and body as compared to his brain had always managed to provide focus to his thoughts far more efficiently than every strategy of the mind. 

And another idea slowly arose inside him for which this particular skill might also prove useful. Not that he told the doctors (or, indeed, anyone) – they still thought him labile and morbid, and he would not want his stay to be prolonged for any longer than it already was. It was a good enough sign that he seemed to exhibit sufficient sanity to convince them with entrusting him a sharp item to hold inside his hands for the carving process, for as long as he was supervised. 

In the beginning, he barely had the strength inside his palms to grip a tool and move it over the edge of the wood with the required pressure to be able to produce as much as a little dent. But he did it, again. One time a minute. Staring at the piece of wood. Another time, starting again, gathering up another flicker of resoluteness. 

_ Again.  _

_ Again.  _

_Again._

Staring at his trembling, scarred hands and wrists. 

_ Again. _ Like bringing down the hammer inside the forge, like working on a piece of glowing metal. 

Until it yielded routine.

Until he managed to calm down his heart racing away inside his chest during the panic, those episodes of reliving the past – at least the minor ones, those he was beginning to anticipate and to be able to somehow control, merely by picking up a piece of wood and starting to carve. 

Until he had crawled far enough that the mud gave way to safer grounds. 

And all this notwithstanding, there was the shame: an ever-present companion to the blame he hoarded for himself. 

* * *

Blaming myself had, for the longest time, been the only way I had known how to categorise and process what had taken place.

* * *

The contempt that he had been reduced to nothing but this hardly functioning mass of flesh and bone, sitting in a wheelchair, the pain inside his wrecked, scarcely-healing body only bearable with doses of morphine concentrated enough that they sufficed to send him back into another on-set of panicked delirium. Only able to complete one rational order after the other, tasks composed of simple and monotone repetition – when just a few months ago he’d been able to command a hundred men across complex battlefields, all while executing several separate spells and handling deadly weapons with utter precision at the very same time. 

But he couldn’t do anything about that. 

He could only take another breath, and fight through another fit of shell-shocked onslaughts of images – werewolves mauling a soldier right in front of him –  _ another carve _ – the ground smothered with the disfigured, stiffened remains of men and women and children –  _ another carve _ – a demon trap going off without warning and killing half a village, leaving him lying paralysed on the ground bleeding out of his nose after he'd only at last heartbeat, at excessive strain, been able to deflect the effects from his men –  _ another carve  _ – being buried under the rubble of a collapsing house, no air, being taken under fire with no way to escape, being strangled against a wall, the rumble of tanks and aircrafts, the shrieks of falling bombs, the blade of a knife descending towards his throat, running through endless showers of bullets and mortar shell fire, and he knew, this time he’d die, 

_ he’d die,  _

_ he’d die,  _

_ he’d die, _

but he was already dead, death was his friend, so he kept running,  _ he could keep doing this, _ he shan't, mustn't falter –

He could only try to carve a little bit deeper every time he picked up the tools anew.

After another two weeks, Thomas had finally managed to produce a small figurine. An effort had been made to have it resemble a dog, but according to Mary – whom Alice took with her to meet him for the first time since he had come back to Britain – it much rather looked like a slightly disfigured otter. 

There might have been a ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he wrote, _ ‘I have never been one for the arts’, _ into his notebook and showed it to his niece in response. 

And young Mary had laughed, a sound so rare and brilliant inside the hospital that it brought several heads to turn, and she had reciprocated his smile – a radiant smile, just as she had smiled at him before Ettersberg happened, smiled back at him –

_ Ettersberg. _ Standing numbed as he raked his gaze over the frozen and disfigured corpses, as he felt his insides breaking apart with horror for one another uncountable time. 

Mary could have been one of those dead and starved children, one of the corpses lying on the outskirts of Buchenwald. 

When Thomas finally wound his way back through an identifiable mass of minutes and life, from the brink of the 19th of January 1945 to the present – back out of the labyrinth of burning tree stumps turned death trap, these claws of  _ Grosser Ettersberg _ and the crushing paralysis it brought – it was evening. Alice and Mary must have been long gone, and once more, he stared back up at the ceiling. Around midnight he had scraped up enough energy to sit up, take a fresh chunk of wood, and start to carve once more while the nurse observed him out of compassionate, brown eyes. 

* * *

My mind denied me the remembrance of her name, no matter how much I tried – my mind denied me so much back then.

* * *

Another figurine was finished a few hours later. 

“It’s beautiful,” said the nurse, observing the piece inside Thomas’ hands.

The hands of a killer, a weapon of war; the hands that had mercilessly slaughtered man after man after man, be it by the means of magic, a grenade, a sniper rifle and a bullet, a knife, or bare. 

Those hands that had pushed countless beings into death’s open arms. One after the other. 

Those hands now broken and carving wood to give them a new function since their use for bloodshed and murder was no longer required; those empty hands after next to everyone he had used to hold and embrace had been taken away. 

For some vague reason, Thomas had to think of flakes of snow dancing towards the earth from a lifeless sky upon hearing the nurses’ response. There was the flash of blonde hair cut short and uneven, and the sentiment of unexpected kindness; the humming of a German tune, the taste of white wine turned sour, and an old bridge built of dirty bricks and covered in rubble; one that never seemed to end whenever he tried to run across it.

Perchance he'd remember someday when his mind denied him no longer. When the thick mist of fear and agony, of grief and blame and pain, had melted down to something he could grasp without running the risk of cutting himself apart while trying to do so. 

It was probably just another one of the tiny fragments waiting to be picked up by him at some improbable far-away point in time. The instance where he would be able to understand. Where it would all make sense. 

* * *

It would never do. You have to remember: 

There is no logic in war. 

However, this did not keep me from trying.

Rather, with tedious and endless weeks wasting away, I gradually grew uncertain if I actually desired to do so. 

To understand.

Maybe it was all better left shrouded in incomprehension, hidden in a dark corner and forgotten. 

Thus, all I did had been to crawl on through the mud until I got to a dry patch of land. 

And for the longest time, merely lying there and not actively suffocating seemed like the best I would ever regain. 

* * *

“I suppose that I must have spent a lot of time there before I managed to stand up,” I say. 

“On this dry patch of land?” asks my therapist, Dr Valerie Green. 

As I answer, my voice is quiet and too revealing for my liking. Today, I have journeyed far beyond my zone of convenience – perhaps further than ever before. 

But my lips move, and they give way to words of truth spilling out into the air. The silence has been broken, and I can lie no longer. 

“Yes. It meant existing. Existing was better than continuously surviving. I could not stand surviving anymore.”

“And what, do you think, has been the difference?” inquires Dr Green.

It has been a long session. I have long overstayed by now, but this possibility had been anticipated when we had set the dates to tackle this complex of themes: I am her last client on this day. 

Thus, I allow myself to take time to think. 

My temples are throbbing. My eyes are burning. But my mind is denying me no more. I manage to melt down another cloud of mist and step through. 

The long walk home is still not done. 

“It segued back into something akin to being alive, but I was not. Not truly,” I surmise. “It did not mean more happiness. Indeed, I would have never asked for that. Actual happiness. I thought it impossible to attain even, as I could not forget, no matter how much I tried. And that was what I thought it needed. Hence, simple existence proved to be the more conducive option.”

“As opposed to what?”

“Fighting,” I say. Another dull piece of truth thrown out into the open. The urge to stoop and grasp for it is immediate, but an unexpected stab of fear keeps me from doing so. I realise that this time, I am not entirely sure if my calluses are sufficient to stop the edges of this precise piece from cutting to a dangerous depth. 

Dr Green inclines her head. Her gaze is settled on me, and as I manage to meet it, I see it softening. At the crossroads, she always leaves it up to me to stop or to go on.

I decide to take the risk and stumble onwards, down that endless path. Just as once, surviving grew to be beyond all bearing, I cannot stand the mere traces of an empty existence any longer.

“Fighting would indicate to go on to pick up and examine all those pieces. It would have meant letting all those… emotions come back to the forefront of my heart. Accepting that they had never left and that there was a chance of them overwhelming me once more. I was afraid of all the desperation. Or of what it might develop into. You see, I find enough proof in both my memories and patterns of recent actions what… monster I am capable of turning into whenever I let anger gain the upper hand. And otherwise, it seemed conceited to lay claim to any sort of acrimony. How could I possibly justify displeasure, or even rage, when I was the one being alive? The one who had, by whatever multifarious graces, been handed the chance and tools to experience peace in our time? This would not help with what I wanted.”

We had touched upon the comparison of trauma long before. It was only when Dr Green had utilised my own metaphor of drowning, and about how even a person who is one foot under the surface is just as dead as someone who has already sunk a dozen feet deep, that I began to understand.

Likewise, we had conversed on the topic of rage. How it could not just destroy, but lift one up, make one stand and walk. How it could overcome the guilt of outliving, make space to mourn for what one has lost to a traumatic experience and provide a spark to light the fire to reclaim what was rightfully someone’s own: all that makes a human more than just a body. At first, I had been disgusted at myself when I first experienced the query of  _ ‘Why I?’ _ arise inside my mind. Disgust, then, turned to fear. Only when I allowed the bursts of anger to develop freely – did not try to contain them, but embrace them instead – they began to give way to a sort of serenity that I had, since the war, never gotten the chance to truly rediscover.

I know which question she will ask next. 

“Can you tell me what it was that you wanted, Thomas?” 

I have to lower my head. But if I stop now, all progress will be lost.

_ Aut viam inveniam, aut faciam. _

I’m taking several, deep breaths. (I’m still breathing, even though I was that stupendously close to stopping uncountable times.) And then, I fight; I fight and carve the response out of my throat, even as it begins to close up.

“All I wanted was less pain,” I whisper. Drops drip onto my thighs and hands folded upon them; wetting the knots of scars that cover my knuckles. “That’s all I wanted. Just a little… a little less…  _ pain _ .”

These days, I am crying much more often with tears than with thoughts. Dr Green has told me that it was no sign of weakness; rather that I was being brave. But I can’t say that I feel the same way. 

Why was there always pain whensoever I picked up a piece?

Here is the lesson it took the longest to learn:

This was how it should be.

That with every time, I would need renewed courage, because change and growth should hurt. It should not be easy to carry – or indeed, carry on: 

As this was what it meant to be truly alive.

But it would always be less painful than staying in a place nearer to, or worse, where the pain had been originally wrought upon you:

This is what I am picking up the pieces for.

That I could hold onto them; not to forget them – never forget, as long as I would be able to remember facing towards the eternal – but to prepare myself to let them go. 

To heal the cracks: because it was possible, and because my new family had replenished the well that was hope. 

Hope that I was worth enough.

And hope – or maybe, assurance – that it would not be required to ever find all the once-lost pieces; as I am allowed to make fillings of my very own, new design.

And, ultimately, to encounter forgiveness:

Whensoever that may be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyways, this is it. I originally planned to upload this together with the third chapter of time is broken, which is - as of now - actually written, but still has to undergo edits (which might take some time). 
> 
> I really do hope that you (considering that this fic has touched upon some dark topics) find some hope and positivity inside the ending.
> 
> I put a lot of love and heart into this and would be touched if you'd leave Kudos, or a comment, if you found some sort of worth or enjoyment inside this. Thank you. Feel hugged and loved.


End file.
